The practical blogger’s style guide

Do you express your creativity online?
Are you a blogger, graphic designer, or virtual assistant?

If you have a creative online presence, it is important to create a consistent look and feel across all posts , images, files, and products.

A style guide captures all the relative information in one place.

If you’re a Virtual Assistant (VA) you may need to create one for your personal site as well as one for each client.

If you’re a graphic artist, your site designs, ebook covers, products, logos and branding should be consistent. Create a separate style guide for projects and clients.

If you’re a blogger a style guide is a must!

Create a style guide for your blog or website

Provide a copy to each member of your staff including virtual assistants & designers
A good quality, consistent style provides the reader with continuity. Unless you’re a site like Mashable, the reader should not be able to tell if your site has multiple authors or content producers.
Guest posts should follow your style guide, but indicate guest author’s name

Review at least annually to make sure all branding is up-to-date and still fits within your business and brand goals.

Update the style guide anytime you rebrand or change your website them

When referring to color, keep in mind :

CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color code used for print design

RGB (red/green/blue) color codes used for digital design

What’s in a style guide?

A style guide has relative information for the elements, colors, and fonts used in your brand.

Download your free style guide and follow along

Core Values, Tone & Mood

Capture your core values and the promises you’re making with your readers

Document your mood, what your brand is and is not

Define the tone of your blog

Brand Colors

Pick colors that match your values, mood and tone

Use palettegenerator.com or other online tool to generate a color palette. Upload a photo and in a few seconds, you’ll get a color palette with HEX color codes, some even include the RGB & CMYK codes

Shape Variations (optional, you may not have these on your site)

Typography

Choose font family and font namespick a font that is easy to read

Define the font size & style

Determine text alignment, decoration & transform

Capture the HEX#, CMYK# & RGB#s for each colorselect a color that is easy on the eyesI love yellow, bright pink and green as much as the next person but some tones of those colors are very hard on the eyes

Pick no more than 3 fontstoo many fonts makes your site feel cluttered

Call to Action

Standardize your Call to Action buttons

Capture the HEX#, CMYK# & RGB#s for each color

Choose font family and font names

Images

Standardize blog and social media images

Standardize the text overlay and color

Capture social media icon

Include headshot Images

Include Signature Image

Image for your newsletter header

Image for your email closing

Remember your blog style guide serves as a communication tool between you and your team.

Documenting and imbedding your images serves as a backup in the event you have to restore your website or child theme CSS settings. You’ll be grateful you took the time to have your branding and styles documented.

Planning upfront will save a lot of headache, time, and money on the backend.

A blog or website that is clean, crisp, and uncluttered

is easier to read

welcoming to your reader

and converts your readers into subscribers

Think of your style guide as an insurance policy.
You may never need it, but if you do; you’ll be glad you put forth the effort!